Luke Skywalker's uncle dies at 89

I just found this on my local news station website. Thought I'd share it with everyone.

GreyJediPathfinder

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LOS ANGELES (AP) - Actor Phil Brown, who played Luke Skywalker's loving but doomed Uncle Owen in "Star Wars," has died of pneumonia. He was 89. Brown died Thursday at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, said his wife, Ginny.

Brown worked in stage and film for more than 60 years, many of them spent in England, but many remember him as Luke's loving uncle in George Lucas' 1977 blockbuster. His character tries to give Luke a normal childhood on a farm and keep him from knowing his Jedi roots. Imperial storm troopers later kill Uncle Owen and his wife, Beru.

He got the role when Lucas, filming scenes for "Star Wars" on a London sound stage, needed an actor with a strong American accent. Brown spent a month or so in Tunisia filming a handful of scenes.

After years in England, Brown returned to California in the early 1990s, and with his "Star Wars" link he became a popular figure at science fiction conventions. He also played a council elder in a 1999 short film, "Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming," inspired by the 1970s TV series "Battlestar Galactica."

Brown, the son of a doctor, was born in Cambridge, Mass., and graduated from Stanford University. In the 1940s, he worked on Broadway, helped found the Actor's Laboratory, a theater group in Hollywood, and found work as a director.

In the 1950s, Brown was blacklisted during the communist scare in the United States. A longtime progressive, Brown always denied being a communist.

Moving to London, he found work on stage and in such films as "Tropic of Cancer" (1970) and "Twilight's Last Gleaming" (1977).

Besides his wife of 65 years, he is survived by a son, Kevin, of Hawaii; two grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.